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The UK will have £676 billion saved up in new-style defined contribution pension plans by 2023, three times today’s total, according to market-research from consultancy Spence Johnson.

The research also suggests that between £4 billion and £10 billion of investment mandates could change hands a year in this market, suggesting big opportunities for asset managers.

But Magnus Spence, director of Spence Johnson, said that investment firms would need to be quick to take advantage, as the “change frenzy” resulting from the government’s auto-enrolment policy, which obliges every UK company to set up a pension-plan for its staff, will only last for another two years.

He said: “This will mean that new-business opportunities rise in value to over £10 billion in 2016. As auto enrolment takes effect, then we will revert to a more normal pattern of opportunity generation of around £4 billion in 2018, rising to some £8 billion in 2023.”

The market-research firm has tracked exactly 100 asset management firms active in this market today. The firm picked out 12 “first tier” suppliers who control 88% of the assets in the market.

By 2023, the consultancy firm said, only about 9% of DC plans will be run as standalone trusts — the rest will be contract plans run by insurers. But Spence Johnson said this did not mean that trust-based DC was “dead”.

On the contrary, the trusts, though small in number, are likely to grow much faster than smaller plans and will end up as the largest plans by membership and by assets, holding about 40% of total savings by 2023.

Spence Johnson is an authoritative source of information on the UK’s DC market. In September, the firm’s figures were cited by the Office for Fair Trading in its landmark report into competition and pricing in the pensions industry.